What this article misses is Nepo is famous in the chess community for caving into pressure after losing once. A lot of people have said that Nepo was immensely lucky with the Candidates Tournament (the tournament that allowed him to play for the World Championship) since that tournament was split into two parts due to COVID. The break happened precisely after Nepo lost a crucial game and allowed him some time to regain his composure. I doubt Nepo would have won the Candidates if he had to play immediately after his loss.
On the other hand, Carlsen is well-known for his mental fortitude. It’s something that Vishy Anand, the previous champion, has talked about extensively. Carlsen’s style is often called “squeezing blood from a stone” because he will play equal-looking endgames and mentally exhaust his opponent into making a tiny mistake that he will convert into an advantage.
It was indeed a tough match-up for Nepo, and most knew it would end tragically for Nepo. Despite being an excellent player, he’s not on the same level as Carlsen.
The detail of game 6 was just that, a detail. Most people thought Nepo would cave after a loss and that's what he did. Magnus proved with Karjack that he doesn't cave.
I thought Caruana was a much better match up, and he held serve in the classical format. But Carlsen is strong in all three, hell, in all four formats. I think Firouzja has the potential to be a great match up. But it's just really hard to beat Magnus. He has Fischer's will to win with even more accuracy.
> he will play equal-looking endgames and mentally exhaust his opponent into making a tiny mistake that he will convert into an advantage
I watched Carlsen do this live last night. In his first game of the Rapid and Blitz World Championship[0]. Relentless pressure. Constantly demanding accuracy from his opponent until they blundered into a tactic.
> The talk of psychology is redundant. Never heard of the phrase "squeezing blood from stone" because well there is no blood in stones. The phrase is "squeezing water from stone" and has been used tons of times in the past to describe other chess players as well.
> a game that is simply put not as interesting anymore.
Chess is actually experiencing a revival, despite the ascendancy of chess engines. Chess channels on YouTube are quite active, and of course the Netflix show gave the game a good bump in popularity.
> Carlsen is known for his ability to beat his opponents at chess. Has nothing to do with mental fortitude. You can be the most mentally tough person on earth and it won't enable you to see tactics better.
What are you talking about man? Mental preparation if one of the key ingredients when preparing for chess tournaments. In recent interview Topalov said about Carlsen [0], that "after the seventh hour his brain works at almost the same level as in the second hour. Very many people are capable of playing decently for three, four or five hours, but in the 6th-7th hour almost everyone crashes. He, however, plays very evenly. That’s his main advantage over the rest"
> Never heard of the phrase "squeezing blood from stone" because well there is no blood in stones.
That's the point. You can't squeeze blood from a stone because there isn't any, i.e. it's fruitless to try because you'll always fail.
As for "mental toughness" and "chess ability," the idea is that you need both. You could have world-class abilities, but they won't won't help you to win championships if you turn into a quivering pile of nerves at the thought of playing a game in public, for example. Carlsen seems better able to hold his nerve over long periods, allowing him to use his superior chess ability consistently, whereas other players may become exhausted, upset, or distracted more easily.
Not only that but searching google for "Carlsen blood from stone" retreives plenty of results showing this version of the idiom being used for Carlsen specifically.
The point isn’t that mental fortitude enables you to see tactics better. The point is that it enables you to keep seeing tactics at close to peak performance in adverse conditions. That’s the whole point being made here — in a match against an identically skilled opponent, Magnus can just win by outlasting the other player.
He wins by being better at chess. Close to peak performance is everyday thing for Nepo and Carlsen. Not like they play at a rating 1500 but then they exert themselves totally and play at 2900 level and the differential in skill is who is wearing lucky socks or who watched Rocky Balboa last night.
> Carlsen is known for his ability to beat his opponents at chess. Has nothing to do with mental fortitude.
You're choosing to ignore the entire argument instead of addressing it. When you say "ability to beat his opponent at chess" that includes the mental fortitude (also emotional stability, ability to perform consistently over long matches etc) The point is that after game 6 Ian's performance was far below his actual chess ability. So we look to psychology to explain that difference. Saying stuff like "he performed at that level so that's his ability" doesn't get anyone anywhere.
It's hard to call the event as a whole exciting, especially from Game 7 on, but if you have any interest in chess I highly recommend watching a recap of Game 6—that one's going into the history books, I think. GothamChess made my favourite recap of it, but Agadmator's dry wit is always available if you find Levy annoying :)
I thought it was an entertaining watch. I think the chess community is a bit too picky about what makes a good match.
- many draws -> "chess is dead", "yawn, another draw", "they should change the format"
- one player wins decisively -> "this isn't World Championship level", "how embarrassing for Ian", "someone else should play instead"
So you really need to have very very close wins (like game 6 this year) throughout the entire match to satisfy people. Realistically that's not going to happen very often.
If we're totally honest, people who are complaining about draws are usually recent new fans, or people who watch it for spectacle. I think it is very similar to football (soccer), those games that fans perceive as boring, dull, are tactically the most interesting to watch and analyze.
Regarding the last point, everyone who has looked at the game of Go with its 0.5 point komi (compensation to white for black playing first) must agree that it is a stroke of brilliance to prevent endless draws.
Some chess tournaments make draws worth ⅓ instead of ½ to incentive aggressive play, but they seem to end up with similar draw rates as normal tournaments. Of course, that wouldn't work at all for a 1v1 event like the WCC, it would probably just make it ~50% longer.
The main thing to decrease draws seems to be shorter time format, but the Blitz championship seems to attract less attention than the classical, and of course blunders are more likely, which is a double edged sword.
Maybe the next WCC will be more exciting, since Alireza probably has far better winning odds, or if Magnus doesn't compete then the challengers won't be terrified into playing 14 Berlin draw lines.
It used to have adjournments where the Russians had a tremendous advantage. When Fischer played Botvinnik at the Olympiad in 1962, they adjourned. Fischer sealed his 45th move and Botvinnik gave the position to his seconds who sent it to Moscow to a room full of GMs. Botvinnik himself went to sleep and woke up to be handed a saving brilliancy.
The time format also really changed in that rapid and blitz are heavily contested. Magnus and the other super GMs even play bullet.
There has been some interest in FischerRandom or Chess 960.
Not a rule change, but computers have democratized chess and massively improved play. A modern GM would simply crush Tal. Stockfish taught a level of accuracy that is insane. And now players learn new strategies from Alpha Zero class machines.
> There has been some interest in FischerRandom or Chess 960.
Do people really want to give up all of the past 100-years of opening theory? I don't think so.
The #1 issue of Chess is "boring, everything's a draw". Well, good news. We can get rid of draws with "Stalemate == Black Wins. 50-move / 3-move repetition == White Wins".
Very small rule change. Not only that, it keeps Stalemate-practice as a key-study for Black players. So all the skills you've gained for the past 100 years (from opening theory, to stalemate practice) remains relevant.
Fischer Random / 960 is for people who want to throw away the entirety of chess opening theory. I'm sure that's a valid concern and/or criticism of chess, but I don't think its something the entire community agrees upon (after all: everyone keeps playing Chess / Shogi with exactly the same opening setup. There's something deeply cultural about keeping the setup the same for hundreds of years).
No offense but it would need to be much more refined than what you suggest. Stalemate is pretty rare, but the 50 move / 3 move repetition is 99% of draws in chess- or at least would be the outcome if players were not allowed to agree to a draw. Nearly every single game at the top level would be a white win if all white has to do is effectively draw.
Maybe instead of stalemate you meant a draw where neither side has enough material to checkmate? If you make that a black win, white would always have to push for a win.
In computer chess, they're already changing the opening position in order to get more decisive games. I think that would be a better approach to saving classical chess than changing the winning conditions.
The opening theory of the past wouldn't work with different winning conditions anyway.
> The opening theory of the past wouldn't work with different winning conditions anyway.
Black is going for Stalemate right now, because its well known that Black is at a minor disadvantage against White.
White is going for win.
So opening theory won't change too much. It just formalizes the principle that Black will want to explicitly "draw" (by calling Stalemates a draw).
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Armageddon chess has demonstrated that "all draws are black-wins" is too much of an advantage however. The next best step is to take the 4 draw conditions (stalemate, insufficient material, 3-move repetition, 50-move rule) and divvy the 4-draw conditions up between black-and-white to better balance the game towards 50/50 chance.
White is generally OK with a draw, though, and can e.g. sacrifice material for an attack or take other risks if there is a forced draw in case the attack fails.
True, in fact I think a lot of those ideas are not even remotely new. For example, in shogi (Japanese chess), stalemate is a loss for the stalemated side (because that side can't make progress), and three-fold repetition is a loss for the side giving checks (because that side chose not to make progress).
I remember the Kramnik-DeepMind collaboration studied the stalemate=win variant, I don't remember what the results were.
What would be the wisdom of Black winning stalemates, though?
> What would be the wisdom of Black winning stalemates, though?
Ad-hoc balancing change. White currently has the advantage in chess. Any rule changes therefore, should be +Black advantage, to minimize the harm to the win/loss ratios.
Rule-changes should aim for 50/50 win/loss ratio between Black and White. Well... ideally we make a better game (and this "better game" probably is one with fewer draws). But if we're in a situation between two choices, one benefiting white and the second benefiting black... prefer to give the advantage to the weaker side.
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Armageddon Chess (Black wins all draws) has already been tried, and the advantage is distinctly Black. It fixes the draw problem by brute force, but it goes too far and now White is at a disadvantage. Splitting up the draws to mitigate Black's advantage under Armageddon rules would be preferred if 50/50 balance is considered the ideal.
> There's something kind of similar, Armageddon chess, where black wins draws and white gets a time advantage.
Black wins draws is a bit too inelegant, as that leads to a Black advantage. Splitting the draws into Stalemate / Impossible / 50-move end / 3-move repetition gives us 4 draw-conditions to "split" between the two players.
> This is also lame, since a world championship specifically for classical chess should not be decided by non-classical chess.
There's something to be said that classical chess is definitely becoming boring because of the frequency of draws... possibly due to the increase of computer analysis and advanced play we have today.
Some kind of "no-draw chess" should be the new classic chess standard applied to the game.
There were plenty of amazing games in classical chess this year (and just because a game is a draw doesn’t mean it wasn’t exciting). An example of a great game this year is Carlsen v So at the Champions Tour. Another great game was Dominguez vs MVL at Sinquefield (Dominguez won the brilliancy award).
Many up and coming (young) players are also really exciting: Alireza, Duda, and Dubov. Duda’s win over Karjakin in the World Cup was pretty spectacular.
Granted Nepo self-destructed starting Game 8, so any psychological sub-currents paled in comparision with the on-the-board blunders. But I wouldn't go as far to call Classical chess "lame".
